Passion for Anatomy

Anatomy has been a delightful pursuit for the last year since my graduation from Georgetown Atelier.

I am so enamoured with it; the human body, the biological machine, an absolute beauty; sophisticated and elegant, powerful and capable of executing our will as well as express our emotions. As social beings our bodies and minds have tremendous power to communicate and perceive our mood and character.

Every artist who studies anatomy does it for a slightly different reason, I believe. Some study anatomy as a tool to improve the realism of their work and some to be able to successfully work from imagination. Some are athletes and have a fascination with the muscles and the mechanics of motion, some love it from an evolutionary point of view, for some it is an outlet for their admiration of the human being. My impression is that this has been more prevalent in some earlier periods in history such as ancient Greece and Rome. Another example that comes to mind is Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, where he places a male in the center of a circle and explores the internal proportions that the body creates. Perhaps the first time when a single human being, not part of a historic scene and not clothed, either, was made the center of a study of internal proportions. How beautiful.

As with everything else, true, selfish, uninterrupted motivation is required for studying anything.

For a miraculous reason which I will not attempt to explore, I have plenty of motivation to study the subject. On my spare time I doodle the bones and muscles, test myself to see if I remember the origin and insertion of muscles, draw different poses and try to figure out what shape the muscles would make in that pose. It’s fun. I may have procrastinated every single course in college, but when it comes to this, no one needs to impose any homework or deadlines for me. I do it myself. I test myself and ruthlessly give myself the correct score. Take notes on what is missing. It’s a lot of fun.

These are pictures from my sketchbook, most of them done from imagination.

If you like these studies and imaginary drawings, you can view more on Ifat Glassman Art Facebook page, in this album.

If you like these studies, don’t forget to visit the main page and ‘Like’ it. I try to post studies and doodles often.